Disconnected From Obama's America

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

Disconnected From Obama's America
Arkansans Wary of President-Elect's Urban Perspective
By Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 16, 2009

BRINKLEY, Ark. -- Wayne Loewer's truck reveals a lot about his life. A 12-gauge shotgun for duck hunting rests on the floorboard. A blue thermal lunch bag containing elk meat is shoved under the seat, left in haste that morning by his teenage son rushing to catch the school bus.

Binoculars in the console help Loewer scan his 2,900 acres of rice, soybeans and corn.

The dashboard radio is set to classic rock, playing the same Lynyrd Skynyrd tunes from Loewer's high school days, when Brinkley was still a thriving small town with stores and a movie theater.

His muddy truck is 900 miles from the kiosks crowding Pennsylvania Avenue selling "Hope Won" T-shirts. But more than miles separate Loewer from the coming celebration in Washington over Barack Obama's inauguration as president.

The 52-year-old farmer is a conservative Democrat who bet on Republican John McCain and lost, a description that would apply to many in the white South. Now Loewer wonders about his place in Obama's America.

"I'm worried that he's not gonna understand the rural way of life," he says.

On this cold January day, Loewer makes his morning rounds -- the irrigation company, the seed distributor, a well supplier -- and everywhere he goes, the same anxieties are expressed.

"That comment he made about guns and religion, it's frightening, you have to admit," says the secretary at his accountant's office.

Loewer agrees. "I don't believe in going around with a gun strapped to your hip, Wild West-style," he says. "But you ought to be able to protect yourself."

He understands the cultural chasm between him and Obama's Ivy League, biracial, global polish. He realizes he is set apart from the 53 percent majority that put Obama in the White House.

Loewer is not bitter. He is eager to see how Obama will govern.

Still, on the eve of the inauguration, a sense of apprehension prevails in a place that rejected the new president and now warily awaits his version of America.

A Red State Became More So

Arkansans Wary of Obama
To many people of Brinkley, Arkansas - a community that voted overwhelmingly in 2008 for Republican presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.) -- President-elect Barack Obama's election to the White House marks a period of uncertainty for rural America.

Brinkley is halfway between Little Rock and Memphis. Few things break the quiet -- the sound of geese, the 18-wheelers winding by on I-40 or a train whistle blowing from the tracks that run through downtown.

These Delta lowlands are perfect for duck and deer hunting and for growing rice, which Loewer farms just as his father did.

But the "rural way of life" that Loewer describes has its problems: In Brinkley, they include closed-up storefronts, a population that has shrunk to 3,300, a poor education system and meager income levels. Locals say the recession hitting the nation is felt less here because there was no housing or job boom to begin with.

In a presidential election in which the country went solidly Democratic, Arkansas turned a deeper shade of red. Obama didn't campaign in the state, which may partially explain his loss here to McCain by 20 points, but the defeat also reveals the complexities of the country he inherits, particularly in Appalachia and the upland South.

Eleven counties in Arkansas switched their allegiance from the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004 to the Republican in 2008. This includes Monroe County, where, even with an African American population of 40 percent, McCain beat Obama by three points.

Robert Serio, chairman of the local Democratic Party for 30 years, says Obama was viewed as too liberal in Monroe County. "We don't look at national Democrats as being family-oriented," says Serio, a lawyer. "The multicultural thing would be something we are opposed to. The homosexual question would have an impact."

Serio declined to say whom he voted for.

Wayne Loewer defies rigid categorization. A Blue Dog Democrat like many in Arkansas, he voted for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Church plays no role in his life. He supports a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion.

He thought a McCain administration would be just a continuation of Bush's, and he was tired of Bush and what he saw as a failed war in Iraq. He thought Obama's farm policies were stronger than McCain's.

But he says Obama lost his support when he made his infamous remarks at a private fundraiser in San Francisco about small-town Americans who feel marginalized and "cling to guns or religion."

Guns define Loewer's life. He grew up walking the woods with a rifle. He worked as a guide during duck season for extra income. His deep freezer is full of game that he grills with Cajun seasoning or portobello mushrooms for family dinners. There are few better feelings than the one he gets taking his 14-year-old son hunting and teaching him about white-tailed deer.

"We depend on our guns in the South," he says. One of his favorite bumper stickers reads, "If you want more gun control, use two hands."

Not long after Obama's comments, Loewer received mailers from the National Rifle Association saying that Obama planned to ban hunting, restrict gun laws and close 90 percent of gun shops. Several nonpartisan fact-checking groups discredited the claims, but the gun dealers Loewer talked to said the NRA had it right.

"When Obama got elected, I went out and bought a rifle and pistol shells for every weapon I own," he says. "I bought $400 worth of ammo."

Not that Loewer feared Armageddon or a race war; he was stocking up in case the warnings from the NRA and the gun dealers came true.

Some of his alarm has subsided. Obama seems focused on the economy. His appointments so far have been centrist and solid, though it is widely noted in Brinkley that no Southerner has been nominated to any top post.

"Payback time," Loewer says, for the South's rejection of Obama.

He has noticed that blacks around Brinkley -- many whose families originally came to this region to pick cotton -- have a newly emboldened attitude. He's heard about people cutting in line at the grocery store or "doing a little victory dance at the Kwik Shop."

Loewer shrugs.

"If he brings us out of this mess we're in right now, I'll get out in the street and fist-bump with them," he says.

A Rural Way of Life

With planting season two months away, Loewer is monitoring fertilizer and fuel prices so he can lock in a good rate. The volatility of the market makes everything harder. The cost of gas has risen 30 cents in the past four days.

Obama never campaigned in Arkansas, but if he had come to the Delta region he would have seen a primeval beauty with a summer heat so punishing that farm hands walk the rice fields with jugs of water strapped to their sides.

He would have also faced men in feed caps who mistrusted his message of optimism.

"Obama has almost no history with the South," Loewer says, sitting across the desk from Jordan Rudick, a manager at Ritter Crop Service.

"I figure his concern ain't for the South," says Rudick, 26. "He cares more about the urban areas."

With a calculator between them, they haggle over the per-ton cost of fertilizer. Loewer is playing two sellers off each other to get the best deal. Rudick hits the 10-key one more time and announces his best price.

"They still got you beat," Loewer says. He smiles his laid-back smile but realizes the gamble: If he buys now, he is locked into a price that could drop or rise again.

Back in his truck, his wife calls from the Kroger store in Brinkley where she's worked for 35 years. Loewer says he'll swing by, and in five minutes he's standing at a register in front.

"You seen my boss?" he asks a cashier.

"She's back there by the meat."

Near the refrigerated cases, a petite woman holding an inventory scanner greets him. She's wearing a name tag that says "Audrey Loewer, general manager, serving you since 1972."

Obama did not get her vote, either. "I don't know what will happen to people around here if he puts restrictions on guns," Audrey says. "Me and Wayne, we're lucky, we have jobs. With the tight economy, there's gonna be more thefts.

"You see people come in here, you can watch how they buy. They fill up two or three baskets when the check comes in at the first of the month. Then they'll come in at the end of the month and you see Vienna sausages and Spam in their cart. They'll load up on bread."

The Loewers go into the back stockroom, where a woman in her early 40s is lifting 50-pound bags of dog food. A radio plays Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life."

Audrey Loewer started her shift at 5 a.m. But a job like hers in a place like Brinkley is worth its weight in gold: Her family has full health insurance through Kroger.

Before dinner that night at home, Wayne Loewer turns on the barbecue grill while his two kids take target practice in the back yard with a bow. Loewer cooks the red snapper he caught on a family vacation to Florida and froze.

Son Casey proudly shows off three sets of antlers mounted on his bedroom wall. On his dresser: a drill, hunting gloves and an off-brand MP3 player that holds a meager 320 songs but suits him just fine.

"IPods are too complicated," Casey says.

Still, Loewer frets that his children increasingly prefer their electronics to the woods. At the same time, he doesn't want his son to follow him into farming.

"I'd rather him get a good education," Loewer says. "If I had an education, I would have gone on to do something else instead of breaking my back on a farm."

Skepticism and Optimism

The interstates will be soon be clogged with travelers on their way to Washington to be part of the inauguration. They won't be coming from Brinkley.

"In this area around here, you couldn't sell a ticket for 50 cents," one of Loewer's business associates tells him.

Loewer rides across the railroad tracks downtown, past the empty red-brick buildings and the rice-drying operations. He pulls into the parking lot of the Tri County Farmers Association, joining the other trucks lined up out front.

He walks back toward a spacious executive office occupied by Jim Batchelor, the general manager of the agricultural co-op, which serves 1,500 members.

Batchelor offers his philosophy on why Obama lost Monroe County. He says people feared that he would expand social welfare programs.

"You earn your wealth," Batchelor says. "We've had enough handouts from the government. We have second- and third-generation blacks who are living in the projects; they'll never get out of it. They are taught to live in it."

Batchelor says one has to understand the local mind-set. "How can we expect somebody like Obama to do a good job when they can't even handle things around here?" he asks.

And finally: "I think he's a bright guy."

Back in the truck, Loewer says he disagrees with some of the comments. "I've had white guys work for me who couldn't read or write," he says.

He mentions this as he drives out to see Phil Hicks, his top farmhand, who lives in the rural crossroads of Goodwin in a mobile home.

When Loewer arrives, Hicks emerges from a shed where he has been doing some carpentry work. He stands in a ghost yard of old refrigerators tilting in the dirt. Hicks, who is black, has been working for the Loewer family since he was 20. He is now 47 and a father of three. He earns $30,000 a year and gets a winter furlough. He has no benefits.

Hicks loves hunting and the rural life just as much as Loewer, but he voted for Obama.

"He's talking about getting us some health care," Hicks says. "I bet you out of 10 people, nine of them don't have health care around here."

Hicks says the part of the country a president is from doesn't matter when it comes to representing the interests of rural Southerners. "A lot of people from the South just got that mentality," he says.

Loewer grins. "You can't say all Southerners."

"That why I said, 'most,' boss man," Hicks says, grinning back. "I know you ain't nothing like that."

A brief silence before Hicks speaks again. "When my daddy was growing up, all they wanted to do was to use you up and then they were through with you," he says.

He says he knows exactly where he'll be on the day Obama is sworn in: inside his mobile home at the edge of the vast lowlands, glued to CNN.

Loewer says he doesn't know where he'll be on Tuesday but he probably won't watch the inauguration. He will be in the fields, gearing up for planting and wondering about the distance between him and his new president.

"I still have a sneaking suspicion that the price of guns and shells are gonna skyrocket," he says. "But we'll see."

Staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.